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Oral History Interview with Lacy Wright, March 10, 1975. Interview E-0017. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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WILLIAM FINGER:

Lacy, after fifty years in the mill and about …
let's see, about fifteen years real active in the union
(since about '55), what do you see as the value of a union
here in Greensboro?

LACY WRIGHT:

Well the value… In my opinion, if the textile industry
doesn't get organized, with the organization of everything
else in this country eventually it's going to run into a
situation but what they won't have no say-so whatsoever of
what they get. They'll just have to take whatever is offered
to them.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So you think a union's important.

LACY WRIGHT:

Sure!

WILLIAM FINGER:

Well, why do so few people even want to pay dues? Five percent, ten
percent, even in these plants that are organized.

LACY WRIGHT:

I don't know. I never have been able to figure that out,
because I have tried to show people that even though they were
paying… When we first started out, we started out with, I
believe it was seventy-five cents a week; and when I left it had got to
a dollar and a quarter. OK, now if that union, if the people all of them
together would get any strong enough that the International could work
through them or with them without them being a dead-head to them, that
union could make them many times more than what they're going
to pay in dues back in fringe benefits and wages, in working
conditions.

WILLIAM FINGER:

But people don't see that.

LACY WRIGHT:

I just never could get them to see it to save my life. I don't
know why. It's just something that's beyond my
understanding. And living with the people, people that I grew up with,
people that I've lived with all my life, and people that I
had confidence as friends, people that… They
weren't ignorant people; they weren't completely
ignorant people. None of us were highly educated, but we
weren't completely ignorant.